[Release] The Unending

[Remilia Scarlet]

25 minutes ago, LVENdead said:

Out of curiosity, were you inspired at all by Shadows of the Nightmare Realm?

I suppose I was in a way since both are part of my older style of mapping.  Probably more Umbra of Fate, though.

Glad you enjoyed it! ^_^

[LVENdead]

2 minutes ago, Remilia Scarlet said:

I suppose I was in a way since both are part of my older style of mapping. 

 

Oh wow, I didn't realize that YOU made that mapset. I even looked it up, I guess on idgames you put a different alias in the readme than your Doomworld profile?

[Remilia Scarlet]

1 minute ago, LVENdead said:

 

Oh wow, I didn't realize that YOU made that mapset. I even looked it up, I guess on idgames you put a different alias in the readme than your Doomworld profile?

Yeah I've changed my name since then.

In general, always grab my stuff from my website, it's where I keep them up to date and have all of my levels listed ;^)

[terminator]

On 3/7/2021 at 1:26 AM, Remilia Scarlet said:

If I do, it'll be for k8vavoom.  That's still on my list of things I want to do, but it's pretty low priority for me.  There's one large project I have still in the works, so possibly after that's finished.

hi again. being a newbie, at first i did not understand why [if] you wanted to "remaster" [one doomed marine] map, you would make it for [k8vavoom] by @ketmar. not until last night when i tried playing [the unending] using [k8vavoom] (2021, mar 04 build). i must say, woah! such an insane experience! completely blown away. never have i seen such superb lighting in a classic doom game. all running smoothly on my very old laptop using [intel hd graphics 4000] (32mb vram). thank you for the awesome map and @ketmar for [k8vavoom]. understood your wisdom in prefering the source port. yes please, please make more [k8vavoom] maps!

[ketmar]

@LVENdead, @saibog thank you for playing this map, and for trying k8vavoom! i am really proud that such great mapper as Remilia decided to use k8vavoom for doing some maps. as you may find from screenshot thread, there prolly will be more, so stay with us! ;-) i am constantly working on making k8vavoom even faster and better, but the engine is nothing without mappers ready to use its features.

 

p.s.: shoot them in their heads! yeah, that matters -- k8vavoom has built-in headshots feature (turn it off in "options -> gamplay -> headshot options" if you don't like it). that's why autoaim is off by default.

 

@LVENdead as for "no friction" -- nope, this is Doom feature: sometimes bodies are sliding. there are special code in there (not mine, it was there from vanilla times), so sometimes shots thrust monsters towards the player, and sometimes dead bodies are almost friction-less. i think that it is fun.

 

also, the command is "gimme". the console has autocompletion, so "gi" <tab> will give you the command, and second <tab> will show you the available options. the command you wanted is "gimme arsenal" (this is all weapons + all ammo).

Edited March 14, 2021 by ketmar

[ENEMY!!!]

Just played through this map in K8vavoom (I had somehow overlooked both this map and the source port up until today, but K8vavoom was brought to my attention in the "I want to see your wads" thread when I drooled over Doom 3 textures being used to great effect).  It's the first enhanced source port that I've encountered that might tempt me into choosing it over GZDoom for some of my mapping in the near future.

 

Yes, I found the map enjoyable, I think especially for the visuals and the "Sign of Evil" remix (when the music first started playing, I had a feeling it might develop into that, but was still pleasantly surprised when it did).  There was indeed a sense of anti-climax at the end, though I wouldn't say I was disappointed by that, it rather reminded me of the end of Doom E1M8 (fittingly, given the choice of music).

Edited March 14, 2021 by ENEMY!!!

[LVENdead]

@ketmar the engine is certainly impressive as evidenced by this map. I'm wondering if you have any suggestions about which settings are most ideal to tweak for performance? I think I stuck pretty close to the "out of the box" settings, although I did change a few things before recording this playthrough. I love the way this map looks in this engine, I'd love to figure out how to boost my framerate at minimal expense to how it looks.

[ketmar]

@LVENdead this map is quite heavy on geometry and lighting. basically, default settings are tweaked for "nice look and nice performance" -- my idea is that users should not be forced to tweak any options to get everything "right". basically, options are there because "why not?", not because "you have to configure miriads of things to get something working". ;-)

 

sadly, due to dynamic nature of Doom geometry, shadowmaps are quite heavy on the GPU. it mostly stresses VRAM bandwidth (because for each visible light source the engine has to clear shadowmap textures, 6 of them, and fill them again with new geometry). i am constantly looking for ways to make it faster, of course. in the future i'm planning to give mappers more control over lighting -- like special flags for lights that should not cast shadows, and the same flags for linedefs.

 

the shadowmaping code is quite new, this is basically the first "playable" implementation of it. first "non-playable" version was 2-4 times slower than what we have now. so the best way to make it faster now is to watch for new builds, and hope for the best. sorry. ;-)

 

one thing you may try is increasing "options -> screen resolution -> screen scale" (don't forget to chose "set resolution" after the change; also, set texture filtering to "nearest" in "options -> video -> advanced video"). this will use smaller internal resoultion in renderer, and then will scale it up.

 

p.s.: you may also try "gl_shadowmap_size -1" in the console. this is "hidden" setting that sets shadowmap size to 64x64 (it cannot be configured from the menu, because it usually looks ugly, but it hightly depends of the map/scene, you may get some speedup from that too, and it may not look that ugly after all).

Edited March 14, 2021 by ketmar

[MattFright]

These high profile mappers and their exclusivity making people have to download really good and underrated sourceports, smh...

 

I've been eyeing k8vavoom for a while now and this seems like a really good opportunity to give it a shot, these screenshots all look absolutely gorgeous.

[Remilia Scarlet]

So I was thinking about the ending, and I'll be honest... it never occurred to me to put some sort of final epic fight in it.  The idea of the level is that the guy dies and is in a sort of hellish limbo.  Just when he thinks he's about to get out of it, it loops back.  He's stuck in a personal hell, experiencing dying in the car crash over and over.  That's what the ending is meant to convey.  It was also for a canceled community project, and was not the final level, so maybe I felt a large ending fight wasn't necessary at the time.

 

I really did not want to heavily modify the level since it was quite old and tended to lag UDB quite badly on my computer (lol editing at literally 3 fps is fun).  So this probably also figures into why I didn't think of adding a final fight.  "It's old, I'm proud of it but want it out the door so I can move on, so ship it" sort of thing.

 

I suppose if I did this level today, I'd add at least a cool cyberdemon fight at the end, together with other monsters.  Or maybe a custom lower-tier boss monster.  Nothing too fancy like the boss fights in Umbra of Fate, but a "big finish" sort of thing.  But, I also suppose it's fun to break from convention sometimes, too, right? XD

[ketmar]

am i the only one who found that "anti-climatic" ending to be actually good? i mean, this is about personal hell, and just when the protagonist (and the player) thinks that they can get the grand final fight and escape... hell plays its trick.

 

it's slightly depressing, tho. i'd like to have some very-very-secret way to let the hero escape (besides quiting the game, of course ;-).

[Remilia Scarlet]

Oh don't get me wrong, I do like how it ends.  It's probably a bit of a subconscious pastiche to Lovecraft on my part, seeing how much of his stories I've consumed in the past few years.  I just hadn't thought of adding a big fight ending to it.

[LVENdead]

8 hours ago, Remilia Scarlet said:

So I was thinking about the ending, and I'll be honest... it never occurred to me to put some sort of final epic fight in it.  The idea of the level is that the guy dies and is in a sort of hellish limbo.  Just when he thinks he's about to get out of it, it loops back.  He's stuck in a personal hell, experiencing dying in the car crash over and over.  That's what the ending is meant to convey. 

 

Totally understandable. I have a tendency to overlook critical details in the original post when I download maps and if I had read yours, I probably would have interpreted the ending a little more accurately ;) I only mentioned the finale because it almost feels like standalone maps might have more of an expectation to "build to something", or at least that tends to be my expectation. But again, I think the map is memorable enough with how it currently is. 

 

8 hours ago, Remilia Scarlet said:

"It's old, I'm proud of it but want it out the door so I can move on, so ship it" sort of thing.

 

I completely understand this. The most recent map I released was basically this. "I spent all this time working on it, I actually still like it a lot, but I want to FINISH it and get it out the door."

 

8 hours ago, ketmar said:

am i the only one who found that "anti-climatic" ending to be actually good? i mean, this is about personal hell, and just when the protagonist (and the player) thinks that they can get the grand final fight and escape... hell plays its trick.

 

I would only offer this as a counterpoint, and literally for the sake of argument - but wouldn't you think if there was some kind of ultimate struggle at the end, where you overcome something challenging and feel like "Oh thank god I FINALLY earned my escape, I can get out of this place, they threw everything they had at me and it still wasn't enough and now I'm finally going to get out of here-" only to have the rug pulled out from under you when you realized it's going to repeat might underscore the theme a little more? In my opinion, just basically having the ending laid out easily in front of you kind of diminishes this in my opinion. But I would never try to tell a map author it definitively SHOULD be one thing or another. I love experiencing what the author wanted to create and what they intended, not my idea of what I think they should have intended ;)

 

Sorry for that. I just love discussing the creative process, and Doom is like my favorite game ever so I have a lot to say about it, probably past the point where people are willing to continue listening :P

[ketmar]

10 minutes ago, LVENdead said:

but wouldn't you think if there was some kind of ultimate struggle at the end, where you overcome something challenging and feel like "Oh thank god I FINALLY earned my escape, I can get out of this place, they threw everything they had at me and it still wasn't enough and now I'm finally going to get out of here-" only to have the rug pulled out from under you when you realized it's going to repeat might underscore the theme a little more?

and for this i would want to kill the map author. ;-) this is absolutely sadistic not only for the game hero, but for the player too. what did i (as player) do to deserve such punishment?! ;-)

[Clippy]

HEy @Remilia Scarlet remember that time I played your map?

 

I got a comment on the utoob that the download link is broken

 

Your loyal fans can't play this map!

 

Have a good one